Topline
Four separate shootings in four states on Sunday brought the number of mass shootings so far this year to 102, marking the earliest point in the year in at least a decade that mass shootings have reached triple digits, according to the Gun Violence Archive, following several high-profile shootings in California, Michigan and Utah.
Key Facts
Thirteen people were injured and three were killed in four mass shootings Sunday in Lake City, Florida; Capitol Heights, Maryland; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Bolingbrook, Illinois—the three people who died were all killed at a house outside Chicago, where a suspect is in custody.
Mass shootings this year have left a total of 149 people dead and nearly 400 injured, according to the GVA, which started tracking shooting data in 2013 and defines a mass shooting as an incident that killed or injured at least four people—not including the shooter.
At this time last year, there had been 69 mass shootings resulting in 89 deaths, while at this time in 2021, there had been 75 mass shootings and 78 deaths.
The three deadliest mass shootings so far this year all took place in January, including one at a dance hall in Monterey Park, California, which left 12 people dead and another that same week in which a 66-year-old suspected gunman killed 7 people at two locations in Half Moon Bay, California.
Earlier in January, eight members of a family were killed in an apparent murder-suicide in Cedar City, Utah, while another three people were killed and four were injured weeks later in an affluent neighborhood north of Beverly Hills, California, and three more were killed by a gunman at Michigan State University last month, before police say he fatally shot himself.
Big Number
647. That’s how many mass shootings the Gun Violence Archive recorded last year, making it the second-worst year for gun violence over the past decade. The most mass shootings over a given year came in 2021, when the GVA recorded 690, resulting in 706 deaths. There were another 610 mass shootings in 2020—a major uptick from previous years. The GVA recorded 417 in 2019, 336 in 2018, 349 in 2017 and 383 in 2016.
Contra
Following a string of high-profile mass shootings last spring—including a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and a grocery store shooting in Buffalo, New York—Congress in June passed its first sweeping gun control bill in decades. That bill, called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, enhanced background checks for people under 21 and provided $750 million to states to implement so-called crisis-intervention programs, including red flag laws, which would prevent people believed to pose a risk to themselves or others from owning or purchasing guns. In November, a proposed assault weapons ban failed to garner enough support in the Senate, even though it passed the then Democratic-controlled House in July—after it faced a roadblock from Senate Republicans, who argued the bill would remove weapons from Americans who use them for self-defense.
Chief Critic
The National Rifle Association—one of the primary opponents to sweeping gun control legislation—also opposed the proposed assault weapons ban, arguing last year that the bill’s proponents are “selling a lie” and that the bill fails to “limit a bad actor’s access to virtually any sort of firearm he wanted.”
Tangent
Several recent studies have found increased gun control measures reduce the rate of gun violence. A January 2022 study by Everytown for Gun Safety found 14 states with looser gun laws, including Mississippi, Arkansas, Idaho and Georgia, had nearly three times the number of gun deaths as the eight states—including California, New York, Hawaii and New Jersey—that had the strictest gun laws. Data on 2020 gun deaths from murders and suicides from the Pew Research Center found the states with the highest gun death rates were Mississippi (28.6 deaths per 100,000 people), Louisiana (26.3) and Wyoming (25.9), while the states with the lowest rates were Hawaii (3.4) and Massachusetts (3.7).
Further Reading
2023 Off To Historically Fast Start For Mass Shootings (Forbes)
611 Mass Shootings Recorded So Far In 2022—Second-Worst Year For Gun Violence In Almost A Decade (Forbes)
Michigan State University Shooting: At Least 3 Killed, Suspect Found Dead (Forbes)
At Least 3 Dead In 4th California Mass Shooting This Month (Forbes)